Friday, 28 October 2011

{this moment}: A Friday photo tradition with Soulemama. One moment from this week, one that you want to hang onto and not forget. No words. And if you're a blogger playing along, please leave your link!

Thursday, 27 October 2011

I was reading (actually re-reading) this post from Alison of This Blooming Life today. I had never heard this Victorian household chores ryhme in it's whole form before:

Monday is Washing DayTuesday is Ironing DayWednesday is Sewing DayThursday is Market DayFriday is Cleaning DaySaturday is Baking DaySunday is the Day of Rest

How seductively straightforward. I'm with Alison, I struggle to do one single thing at once and often feel like I'm leaping from task to chore to child to dinner to baby to task. Of course I don't envy (at all) the women who had to spend an entire day doing washing by hand, because it took that long. Walking all the way to and from the market. Cleaning all day on their hands and knees.

Thursday, among other things, is Bikkie delivery day here, where I deliver orders. It's also a school day, a pre-school day, the pick up the box from the food co-op day, a bookkeeping day, a gardening day, a cleaning washing mending shopping baking day. And if Adam isn't here, I do the farm chores too. (They're my favourite bit.) He's here today, so I followed him around instead.

Feed the other pigs we've now moved over to our next door neighbours'. They're borrowing them to dig up their vegie garden.

Stop and say hello to next door's new baby turkey.

Feed our baby meat chicks. Look at those wing feathers coming in!

Blessed be the peaceful co-workers.

Feeding animals.

Straightforward. Daily. And even better if someone else is doing the jobs and you are swanning around with a camera going, 'just stay there one more minute honey! I just want to go get a photo of the cow next door.'

Wednesday, 26 October 2011

One of my long-time favourite blogs closed down recently and it really got me thinking.

About how much time we spend recording and revisiting, about what we're not doing while we're busy blogging, about what the motivation behind blogging is. You know. Light and easy stuff.

It strikes me that blogging, particularly at high frequency, is something people do for a specific period of time, but is something pretty hard to sustain long term.

Some people do it - I seriously don't know how Soulemama manages fresh and crafty posts day after day while homeschooling and mothering five children. I love The Pioneer Woman but there is so much going on over there now I find it hard to know where to look. Loobylu is one of the best long-term bloggers around and she had a huge hiatus a couple of years back (and earlier this year too.)

It feel weird when a favourite blog closes down, like a breakup you kind of weren't involved in.

My very good (real life) friend Estelle had a blog that I loved. I was very sad when she abandoned ship and I live in hope that because she hasn't cancelled her typepad subscription therefore she might make a comeback. Estelle is involved in my very favourite custard recipe (we put together her mother's recipe and my mother's recipe and got nirvana.)

She's a marvellous foodie.

And she sent me a slice recipe, before I started this slice thing here. I thought it sounded WEIRD.

She admitted it sounded nuts too, but urged me to try it.

So today I did.

She called it the most amazing nutty, brownie like cakey slicey thing EVA. (Direct quote).

We might call it "Estelle's Insane Slice".

And FAR OUT it's really good. And if you thought the Easy Slice was easy, try this.

Estelle's Insane Slice

Ingredients:

1 cup crunchy peanut butter

¼ cup honey

1 egg lightly beaten

1 tblsp cocoa

Method:

Mix all ingredients together and pour into a greased and lined loaf tin (mine was 22cm by 11cm) and bake for 20 mins on 180degC.

Estelle: "I'm not joking, that's it." (Direct quote.)

Four ingredients. It takes approximately two minutes to make.

Next time I'll double it and put it into a slice tin.

Insanely good.

(Did I say we'd do a healthy meusli bar slice this week? Er, how 'bout next week?)

So do we think there's a future in blogging? This uniquely public record of private worlds? Or is it a strange and short-lived snapshot of all these domestic lives all over the globe that people will um over in a hundred years time. They're going to look at this slice and go, peanut butter, honey, egg and cocoa? Those pre-apocalyptic Australians, they were insane. And far out they ate a lot of slices.

Sunday, 23 October 2011

{For this Rewind, I'm actually posting two posts which were originally published 23 and 26 September, 2009. These posts are favourites of mine with these old photos of our farm, even more significant to me now that we are here. It was also these photos themselves which inspired me to take more photos. It was a few months after these posts when Adam bought me a "proper" camera for my birthday and it kinda got stuck to my nose from then on.}

Family Album, part one

As you know, I love photos. I love taking them, I love looking at them, don't particularly love being in them.

There was a photographer called Ray Henning who was a friend of my Dad's many years ago. He was an amateur photographer and we are uber lucky that he took his camera and caught many photos of Dad, his brother, their Dad, the farm, in ways that without Ray Henning we never would have seen.

Dad, having afternoon tea, looking out of the door of the dairy (at his dog, he said.) May, 1960.

Getting out my camera. Taking more photos.

You?

xxx

Family Album Part 2

Three more from the wonderful Ray Henning, giving us glimpses into moments we wouldn't otherwise see.

He's written on the back of this one: Hay Making. Sunday 6 December 1959.

Dad, Uncle Doug and Grandpa. And what would have been a beloved dog, out the front.

Have you ever hefted a bail of hay? They're really not light at all. First week in December. Hot. A Sunday. Rest day for bankers. If it rains on your hay after you've cut it, before you get it into the hayshed, it can, and frequently does, self combust. Not ideal. So you make hay while the sun shines, you know?

Grandpa. Same day (photo is dated). Same shirt. Pretty happy looking. Perhaps he quite liked Ray Henning because really why would you look so cheerfully at a dude wandering around with a camera, not sweating and not heaving bails?

I love this photo of Grandpa.

I never got to meet him. His big heart gave out before I was born.

So we pore over photos of him, trying to piece together the bits people remember, the stories Dad tells, the farm he left behind, trying to find him.

He look so much like Dad, without a beard. Therefore he must have been excellent.

Cool old tree, huh?

It's still there:

Garages and chook shed come and go, trees remain.

Ever planted a tree for posterity?

Mine are in Brisbane. Maybe I should plant one in Sydney. What about you?

xxx

{Update Sunday 23 October 2011: Planted a lemon tree in Sydney before we left. Now about to plant three hundred coffee trees here on this family farm of ours. Farmers and family come and go, trees remain. Long live The Farm.}

Thursday, 20 October 2011

Have you seen many meat chickens? They don't look much at all like laying hens. All upper body and sturdy legs. But at day old they all look the same.

Cute as (chicken?) pie. (With apologies to all vegetarian friends.)

Tilly and her friends showed each chicken where the food and water was (in case they'd missed it) and gave them all names, the majority of whom seem to be Tinkerbell and Pliny (huh? as in, the younger? Seriously, don't ask me. Most days I have no idea where she's come from.)

The kids are all "these are the chickens we are going to grow then kill then eat" which might sound dreadful but comes out all practical and very natural.

(Although I don't actually think we will kill them ourselves - we'll see.)

Like you, like all sensible people, I'm deeply rattled by our disconnectedness from food. Particularly kids' disconnectedness. There's something awesome about the respect we have for these animals we hand raise, and cherish, and nourish, who will in turn nourish us.

Wednesday, 19 October 2011

It's OK, not drop dead to-die-for fabulous, but nice. A nice slice. Quick and easy. Kid-friendly (as long as they are not allergic to peanuts.)

It's not the prettiest looking thing, but I had excellent intentions of drizzling melted white chocolate over it which I completely ran out of time to do. (I snapped these shots surrounded by friends with sharp knives. Life in my hands, I tell you.)

It's appeal to me is that it's no-bake. Not because turning on the oven and throwing a pan in for fifteen minutes is a problem, but because the oven had something else cooking in it.

This is a melt and mix. A lot like this one, but with the incredibly evil involvement of lard.

Oh yes, lard. Obviously I was without the supervision of Adam-I-draw-the-line-at-lard. I bought some once about twelve years ago to roast potatoes with (like his Grandmother taught me) and he threw it in the bin.

He said he didn't care how freaking awesome his grandmother's roast potatoes were, no lard in our house, please. Then he made some creaking sound that was supposed to be the sound of his arteries hardening. Hilarious.

I was going to use it in a medieval pastry recipe last week (that I didn't get around to) and so I snuck it into the fridge.

It does make this slice fudgy and delicious. However, using copha (like my earlier version) gives a slice more solidity and firmness. Probably better, in retrospect.

Nonetheless.

No-bake chocolate and peanut slice

Ingredients:

75g lard

½ cup coconut cream

1 tin (400g) condensed milk

1 packet Nice biscuits (or plain sweet biscuits)

½ cup cocoa

1 cup crushed peanuts

1 cup shredded coconut

Method:

Melt the lard in a largeish suacepan. Add the coconut cream and condensed milk and stir briskly until all combined. Crush the biscuits in a food processor till fine and stir into the wet mix. Stir in the cocoa, crushed nuts and coconut.